Into Several Remote Nations of the WorldbyJonathan Swift

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The Publisher To The Reader.

[As given in the original edition.]

T

he author of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and intimate friend; there is likewisesome relation between us on the mother's side. About three years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary of theconcourse of curious people coming to him at his house in Redriff, made a small purchase of land, with aconvenient house, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet ingood esteem among his neighbours.Although Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father dwelt, yet I have heard him sayhis family came from Oxfordshire; to confirm which, I have observed in the churchyard at Banbury in thatcounty, several tombs and monuments of the Gullivers.Before he quitted Redriff, he left the custody of the following papers in my hands, with the liberty todispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully perused them three times. The style is very plain andsimple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a little toocircumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was sodistinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when anyone affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it.By the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author's permission, I communicatedthese papers, I now venture to send them into the world, hoping they may be, at least for some time, abetter entertainment to our young noblemen, than the common scribbles of politics and party.This volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made bold to strike out innumerablepassages relating to the winds and tides, as well as to the variations and bearings in the several voyages,together with the minute descriptions of the management of the ship in storms, in the style of sailors;likewise the account of longitudes and latitudes; wherein I have reason to apprehend, that Mr. Gullivermay be a little dissatisfied. But I was resolved to fit the work as much as possible to the general capacityof readers. However, if my own ignorance in sea affairs shall have led me to commit some mistakes, Ialone am answerable for them. And if any traveller hath a curiosity to see the whole work at large, as itcame from the hands of the author, I will be ready to gratify him.As for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will receive satisfaction from the firstpages of the book.RICHARD SYMPSON.A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1727.I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great andfrequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, withdirections to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, asmy cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world." But I do not

remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thingshould be inserted; therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly aparagraph about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverenceand esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered,that it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before mymaster HOUYHNHNM: And besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being inEngland during some part of her majesty's reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay even by twosuccessively, the first whereof was the lord of Godolphin, and the second the lord of Oxford; so that youhave made me say the thing that was not. Likewise in the account of the academy of projectors, andseveral passages of my discourse to my master HOUYHNHNM, you have either omitted some materialcircumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own work. WhenI formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to interpret, butto punish every thing which looked like an INNUENDO (as I think you call it). But, pray how could thatwhich I spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another reign, beapplied to any of the YAHOOS, who now are said to govern the herd; especially at a time when I littlethought, or feared, the unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most reason to complain, when Isee these very YAHOOS carried by HOUYHNHNMS in a vehicle, as if they were brutes, and thosethe rational creatures? And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motiveof my retirement hither.Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to the trust I reposed in you.I do, in the next place, complain of my own great want of judgment, in being prevailed upon by theentreaties and false reasoning of you and some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer mytravels to be published. Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insistedon the motive of public good, that the YAHOOS were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to allabuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above sixmonths warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions. Idesired you would let me know, by a letter, when party and faction were extinguished; judges learnedand upright; pleaders honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazingwith pyramids of law books; the young nobility's education entirely changed; the physicians banished; thefemale YAHOOS abounding in virtue, honour, truth, and good sense; courts and levees of great ministersthoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose andverse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink. These,and a thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they wereplainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned, that seven months werea sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which YAHOOS are subject, if their natures had beencapable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom. Yet, so far have you been from answering myexpectation in any of your letters; that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels,and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself accused of reflectingupon great state folk; of degrading human nature (for so they have still the confidence to style it), and of abusing the female sex. I find likewise that the writers of those bundles are not agreed among themselves;for some of them will not allow me to be the author of my own travels; and others make me author of books to which I am wholly a stranger.I find likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound the times, and mistake the dates,of my several voyages and returns; neither assigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of themonth: and I hear the original manuscript is all destroyed since the publication of my book; neither have Iany copy left: however, I have sent you some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be asecond edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but shall leave that matter to my judicious and candidreaders to adjust it as they please.I hear some of our sea YAHOOS find fault with my sea-language, as not proper in many parts, nor

now in use. I cannot help it. In my first voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldestmariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the sea YAHOOS are apt, likethe land ones, to become new-fangled in their words, which the latter change every year; insomuch, as Iremember upon each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered, that I could hardlyunderstand the new. And I observe, when any YAHOO comes from London out of curiosity to visit meat my house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.If the censure of the YAHOOS could any way affect me, I should have great reason to complain, thatsome of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and havegone so far as to drop hints, that the HOUYHNHNMS and YAHOOS have no more existence than theinhabitants of Utopia.Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of LILLIPUT, BROBDINGRAG (for so the wordshould have been spelt, and not erroneously BROBDINGNAG), and LAPUTA, I have never yet heardof any YAHOO so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related concerning them;because the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction. And is there less probability in myaccount of the HOUYHNHNMS or YAHOOS, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so manythousands even in this country, who only differ from their brother brutes in HOUYHNHNMLAND,because they use a sort of jabber, and do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not theirapprobation. The united praise of the whole race would be of less consequence to me, than the neighingof those two degenerate HOUYHNHNMS I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as theyare, I still improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice.Do these miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated as to defend my veracity?YAHOO as I am, it is well known through all HOUYHNHNMLAND, that, by the instructions andexample of my illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I confess with theutmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeplyrooted in the very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans.I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I forbear troubling myself or youany further. I must freely confess, that since my last return, some corruptions of my YAHOO nature haverevived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and particularly those of my own family, by anunavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming theYAHOO race in this kingdom: But I have now done with all such visionary schemes for ever.APRIL 2, 1727

Part I. A Voyage To Lilliput.

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PART I. CHAPTER I.

 [The author gives some account of himself and family. His first inducements to travel. He isshipwrecked, and swims for his life. Gets safe on shore in the country of Lilliput; is made a prisoner, andcarried up the country.]

M

y father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons. He sent me to EmanuelCollege in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my